After an historic 12-2 run through the non-conference schedule, co-captain Keith Wright and the No. 21 Crimson open the Ivy season Saturday afternoon against Dartmouth.

Ready or not, the real season begins now.

The 14-game tournament that is the Ivy League regular season tips off on Saturday, with the No. 21 Harvard men’s basketball team (12-2) taking on Dartmouth (3-12) at Lavietes Pavilion at 2:00 p.m.

After surging through most of its non-conference schedule, the Crimson hit its first real bump in the road when it lost at Fordham on Tuesday night, the only blemish on its schedule thus far other than a respectable loss at No. 8 UConn.

Though the defeat to the Rams exposed a number of Harvard’s weaknesses, the Crimson cannot afford many slip-ups against any of its Ancient Eight opponents.

With no postseason tournament in the Ivy League, the conference’s representative in the Big Dance is determined by the team with the best regular season league record. That means each contest is as important as any other, and every game—as Harvard learned after losing at Yale by a point last season—can have major postseason implications.

“You can’t get any game back in the Ivy League,” co-captain Oliver McNally said. “We know that. I’ve got to do a better job getting the point across to all the younger guys.”

This year, the road to March Madness should be even tougher for the Crimson, which learned Tuesday night that with its Top-25 ranking and all the national media attention also comes a major target on its back. Playing on the road is always difficult in college basketball, but it should be even more so this year for Harvard, which will be traveling to its rivals’ gyms as a favorite that the home fans will be hungry to see upset.

And in conference play, there are no guarantees, as then-No. 22 Cornell learned in 2010, when it lost by 15 at Penn—which to that point was 3-16—in front of a rowdy crowd at the Palestra.